Everyday low pricing replaces promotions
Oddbins is abandoning all price promotions on single bottles of wine from this week, but is pricing down 350 of its wines instead.
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Wine News Archive
Wine and Food Fest
Do motor heads prefer wine or car oil?
Oz Clarke is taking a road trip through France’s vineyards with Top Gear’s James May for a new BBC series to be screened this autumn, called Oz and James’s Big Wine Adventure.
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Sherry and orange flavoured alcopop?
It’s now the turn of Sherry to get the fruity treatment. Harveys Orange, which hits the shops this month, is a blend of Bristol Cream infused with orange
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UK drinkers waste 87 Million bottles of wine a year!
In the UK we’re wasting the equivalent of 87 million bottles of wine every year just because we don’t store it properly. That means a whopping £3.5 billion of spoilt wine.
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North and South drinking divide
Drinkers who live in the North of England are more likely to binge on alcohol and die younger than their southern counterparts.
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French introduce 'revolutionary' wine brand
The French are finally taking on the New World with a range of simply-labelled, branded wines which are based on single grape varieties rather than locality.
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Lake District launches the first organic wine shop
Britain’s first all-organic wine shop Organico, is located in the Lake District, offering over 150 organic wines.
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Bombing in Lebanon puts harvest at risk
The war in Lebanon could have serious implications for the Lebanese wine industry. With vineyards in the fighting zone, harvest time looming and the problem of getting wine out to their important export markets.
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Big brand caught 'mystery shopping'
Constellation, one of the biggest wine companies in the world has allegedly been trying to boost sales figures by getting staff to buy bottles on expenses in a bid to secure a lucrative contract with the JD Wetherspoon pub chain.
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European wine review is backed by UK winemakers
UK wine producers have given their backing to the European Commission’s draft reforms for the European wine sector following a recent meeting in Brussels. Under the new proposals there would be no limit on planting, nor on the amount of wine we can produc
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Pricey Petrus
Chateau Petrus has broken the record price for not-yet-bottled Bordeaux as buyers are coughing up £20,000 to get hold of cases of the 2005.
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English fizz is top of the world
English sparkling wine scooped a sensational 10 awards at the International Wine & Spirit Competition.
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Heatwave promises another vintage year
The current heatwave may be too much of a good thing for some of us, but the sunshine is great news for our grape growing.
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Wine industry pick screw caps as the future
A recent report has found that, as drinkers, we want three things from our closures, the most important of which is that they’re easy to open.
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Too hot to harvest? Global warming threatens US wine makers
We all smell different
Wine aromas aren’t the same for everyone and are possibly as unique to each person as a fingerprint.
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Red wine makes you sleepy
Scientists in Italy say they’ve discovered that the grapes used for making some red wines contain high levels of the sleep hormone melatonin.
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What a racket!
It was game, set up and snatch during the Wimbledon tennis championships when 300 crates of Champagne Lanson worth more than £90,000 were stolen.
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UK top wine brands
In the battle of the brands, Hardys has beaten off competition from Blossom Hill to be the top take-home wine in the UK. E & J Gallo wasn’t too far behind, taking the third slot in our wine racks, according to the latest top 10 tables of the most popular
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Esk Valley red breaks new records for NZ wine
Esk Valley Estate The Terraces has been sold for what is possibly a record-breaking price for a bottle of New Zealand wine.
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Russian new licensing stamps a warning for the UK
Russian wine fans are having to forego their favourite foreign wine after a bureaucratic blunder has left restaurants and off-licences virtually empty of bottles. The problem arose after new excise stamps, which are compulsory on all alcohol imported into
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Bodeaux prices break records for 2005
Chateaux Margaux and Latour are clocking up the most expensive prices ever for Bordeaux wine sold en primeur at more than £4000 a case. As a result of the 2005 vintage being hailed as one of the greatest ever.
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English wine awards results in
Nyetimber has taken the top award for the fourth year running in The English and Welsh Wine of the Year Competition. While Chapel Down won Best Red Wine, Best Varietal Wine and Best Wine of Other Year’s Vintage, while its English Rose 2005 won Best Rosé a
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Drinking wine at home, now the big night in
More of us are opting to stay at home and enjoy a glass or two rather than go out to the pub, according to recent research. Sales of wine to be drunk on a night in now account for 64 per cent of the market.
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Port hit heavily by hail storms
This year’s port crop has been hit by a heavy hailstorm. Initially, it was thought that up to 80 per cent of the crop in the Douro’s vineyards had been decimated, but top port producers have said that losses are now less than predicted.
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RidgeView toasts the Queen's 80th
It was a right royal celebration for English wine company RidgeView last week when its sparkling wine was chosen to toast the Queen’s 80th birthday at a lunch at London’s Mansion House. The company’s Merret Grosvenor 2001, made from Chardonnay grapes, was
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Cliff Richard duped by F-Word Gordon Ramsey
Last week was no summer holiday for Sir Cliff Richard when celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey duped him into rubbishing his own wine.
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Aussies sell oodles to land of noodles
Australia's Sales to China have soared by 482 per cent in the past year, according to figures released by the Australian Wine & Brandy Corporation.
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Production of English wine set to soar
England as grape growing is set to increase enormously. This year alone well over 120 hectares of vines have gone into the ground and this is just the start of a big expansion plan by the major UK players.
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UK wne drinkers are buying more £6-7 wines
Sales of the £6 to £7 bottles of wine were up 27 per cent in supermarkets in the past year, making it the fastest-growing price band in the UK.
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New Zealand wine sales in the UK grow by 23%
Sales of Kiwi wine are growing by leaps and bounds in the UK. According to recent figures released by market analyst Nielsen, we’ve been buying 23 per cent more New Zealand wine in the past year.
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Georgia looks to export to the UK
The Prime Minister, Zurab Nogaideli, was in the UK promoting Rkatsiteli and Napareuli Gerogian grape vartities last week in a bid to find new markets after a political move by Russia to ban the importation of its wine.
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Tempranillo is proven to be Tinto Fino, Tinto de Toro and Tinta del Pais
Spain’s favourite black grape Tempranillo could truly be unique. Tinto Fino, Tinto de Toro and Tinta del Pais were always thought to be Tempranillo by another name but now Spanish winemakers have discovered that they are all different clones.
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Chris Scott from ThirtyFifty launches the UK first podcast The UK wine show
The UK wine show was launched on Friday. The first UK based podcast, Chris Scott the shows host and producer said We have been planning the show for 3 months and it feels great to get the first show out the door.
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1976 California tasting is being repeated 30 years after putting New World wines on the map
In 1976 at the historic Paris Wine Tasting of French & Californian wines the Californian wines were voted superior to their French counterparts. This tasting really put Californian & New World wines on the map. The tasting has just been re-run with the ex
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Lanson launches World Cup Champagne
Lanson has launched a World Cup Champagne in an attempt to lure footie fans away from lager.
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The world's 2nd largest wine company becomes a family vineyard
You won’t be seeing Ernest & Julio on Gallo labels for much longer as the Californian wine company is changing its name to Gallo Family Vineyards. The move is designed to underline that Gallo is still a family-owned and family-run company.
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40% of Oz wineries are losing money
The sun may be shining in Australia but there’s a big black cloud over its wine industry as the oversupply of grapes and price-squeezing by powerful retailers take their toll.
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Hangover free alcohol a thing of the future?
It could be history for hangovers. Wine drinkers could one day be free to enjoy a few glasses without fear of that morning-after feeling as scientists have discovered it’s possible to make hangover-free alcohol.
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Fruit flavoured wines set to arrive in UK from Oz
If Australians have their way, wines infused with fruit flavours, such as strawberry, peach and passionfruit could soon be turning up in the UK after being well-received in Oz
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Dom Perignon auction 1966 Champagne
A bottle of 1966 Dom Perignon is up for auction this month at Sotheby’s in London signed by all the surviving members of the winning 1966 team. The bottle is estimated at £5,000 to £8,000
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EU plans to cut the funding that turns the French wine lake into Biofuel
The European Commission is introducing reform proposals with the hope of reducing the European wine lake and minimise European taxpayers’ money that turns wine into biofuel!
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Survey says most wine drinkers don't return faulty wine
You’ve bought a bottle of wine that’s corked or faulty, so do you take it back to the shop and complain. Which? asked nearly 3,000 members whether they’d ever had a faulty wine and found that 47 per cent had, but nearly a quarter of them hadn’t sent or ta
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French restructures wine industry
France’s new action plan designed to win back ground from the New World. With the aim of modernising the French wine industry and stemming declining sales, French farm minister Dominique Bussereau announced a restructuring package worth 80 million euros.
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Bordeaux vintage hailed as one of the best
Bordeaux’s 2005 vintage is being hailed as the one of the best ever. Even the influential wine critic Robert Parker is raving about it, saying, ‘the wines are unlike any I have tasted in 28 years of doing these tastings.’
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Global warming a bonus for the UK winemakers
Global warming a bonus for the UK winemakers according to climatologist Gregory Jones from Southern Oregon University. The growing seasons in the northern part of France and southern England are projected to warm 1.3 – 1.6 degrees Centigrade by 2050
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Brad Pitt looking at Italian winery
Brad Pitt is looking to buy a vineyard in Barolo northern Italy
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Bordeaux producers break with tradition
La Terre is a Bordeaux-branded wine, offering a straight red Merlot and a white Sauvignon Blanc, rather than the Bordeaux blends for which the region is famous.
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Gordon Brown favours fizz over still wine in budget
Gordon Brown raises the price of wine went by 4p a bottle, but froze the duty on both Champagne and British sparkling wine
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